Atlanta Air Authority and Keurig: 19 degrees? No prob!

19 degrees this morning, as my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant, foxy, praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA, left for work around 6:30 AM. Brrrr!

It's a couple of days after Veterans Day, and with that as a prompt, coupled with the FREEZING temps, I'm thinking with gratitude in my not-frozen fingers and toes about a particular act of generosity. It was just two years ago that the folks at Atlanta Air Authority provided this semi-impoverished veteran and his family with a brand new, comprehensive heating and air system; I won the system at a local Veterans Day event. Good-bye and good riddance to sweltering in the summer, and huddling around space heaters in the winter.

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I grew up in a home without those luxuries, and remember how awful it was to get out of bed on a cold Georgia morning.
So, thanks again, and for folks living up here in Cherokee County with me, check out their website at the link above or their Facebook page.


Another thing that gets us through the cold mornings (any morning, actually) is a great big cup of hot steaming coffee! We have a coffee maker that makes a pot at a time, but mostly, we use a Keurig K40. It's an older unit, but it still works well. Or does it?

You ever look down at your coffee cup, and say, "No way is that a full cup of coffee!" Well, I have, LOTS of times, and it also seemed that sometimes I get a bigger amount of coffee than other times. So, I decided to check it out.

Test equipment:

Keurig K40, measuring cup, digital scale

Reusable K-cup, Folgers coffee, and a big cup to save the results

 I took careful notes, and followed good procedures, but I'm not going to document those here. If you want to see how I made sure I was getting good data, let me know, and I'll send you my methodology.

First, I ran several cycles of just water through, with an empty K-cup in place. I ran five cycles each in the three capacities of Small Medium, and Large. (Actually ran six on the Large setting.) For accuracy, I weighed them with my scale set on the 'grams' setting, and then converted the results to ounces in the spreadsheet.

Then, I ran one more cycle at each setting, by size order, to see if there was any  variance due to switching settings.

Finally, I brewed one cup of coffee at each setting, using one scoop of Folgers in the re-usable K-cup.

Here are my results:

	Gross weight in grams			Net weight in grams			Net weight in ounces
Water	Small	Medium	Large	Small	Medium	Large	Small	Medium	Large
Run 1	224	287	352	171	234	299	6.03	8.25	10.55
Run 2	222	296	351	169	243	298	5.96	8.57	10.51
Run 3	225	294	351	172	241	298	6.07	8.50	10.51
Run 4	227	291	351	174	238	298	6.14	8.40	10.51
Run 5	223	290	348	170	237	295	6.00	8.36	10.41
Run 6			352			299			10.55
Run 7	228	293	350	175	240	297	6.17	8.47	10.48
Coffee	218	284	335	165	231	282	5.82	8.15	9.95

As you can see, the machine gave fairly reliable results. If I was funded, I'd repeat this using coffee each time, since that's what we really care about, but one run was all I wanted to do sine I'm financing my own research. (and, if you look at the picture, the brewed coffee is all in the big green Bubba cup. No wastage!

I also weighed the coffee grounds, before and after brewing. There was 13 grams of water in with the grounds, which accounts for the differences in the water v coffee output.

I was only checking to see if the Keurig was reliably putting out the same amount of brew at each setting,  and that appears to be the case. My subjective opinion earlier that it wasn't enough coffee is likely due to perspective, both from the cup size (I use a GIANT cup) and from demand (when I want coffee, I want a LOT of coffee!).

It was fun. I ran this as I was eating my breakfast, which was a big bowl of pinto beans and rice, the heart of EVERY good breakfast! And I didn't spill NOTHING, which is good. I was writing my procedures and the results on the tiny pages of a notepad, and it reminded me of the days when I was doing research that really DID matter, and how spilled pinto beans could remain with a researcher for years...

Peace be on your household.